In 'Proof,' love proves to be the most complex equation

By Iris Fanger/For The Patriot Ledger

Wednesday

Jan 24, 2018 at 4:51 PM

David Auburn’s Pulitzer Prize winning drama, “Proof,” which premiered in 2000, and was later adapted into a film, is about a mystery but without a murder victim. The title is a play on words: in mathematics, a proof is a statement that shows how a problem has been solved. In real life, proof is evidence backing up a declaration of fact. Auburn’s play puts both definitions of the word to the test.

“Proof” gets a find staging in an engrossing production by Nora Theatre Company. It’s about a math professor, Robert; his brilliant daughter, Catherine; her sister, Claire; and Catherine’s wanna-be boyfriend, Hal, formerly the professor’s graduate student. Robert has just died, and the family is dealing with the aftermath of settling his affairs and their lives.

Robert had made an important break-through in math when he was in his 20s, which brought him an academic appointment at the University of Chicago, but later had a breakdown lasting until his death. His daughter, Catherine, now in her mid-twenties, quit college to care for him during the past five years. Claire, a financial analyst in New York, who has been paying the bills, has returned to take charge and bring her fragile, younger sister back to life after the trauma of losing their father. Hal, now working as an academic at the university, is going through more than 100 notebooks that Robert had kept while he was at home, hoping to find some inspiration or undiscovered break-through, even though the writings seem to be filled with gibberish. The play is set on the porch of a modest house in the university neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago. Designer, Janie E. Howland has covered the back wall of the porch with faintly seen math equations to establish the aura of the family.

The discovery of a notebook with a 40-page solution to a long-standing mathematical problem at the end of Act I sets the emotional quotient between the characters at a high boil in a dispute about the identity of the author.

Although the play is filled with allusions to the workings of the mathematical mind, the real subject is the relationship between father and daughter, the issues of trust, gender bias in academia, and whether there is a connection between genius and madness. These questions are never solved, even when a happy ending of sorts is tacked on at the end of the two-hour drama.

The cast is led by by Lisa Nguyen as Catherine in a break-out performance that helps clarify the play’s structure of reaching backwards through the years. At first, we see her adrift in the aftermath of her father’s death, then at an earlier time when she realized she must put her life on hold to care for her father. Returning to the present, she finds some happiness with Hal until he questions her integrity. Despite her range of feelings, including the fear that she not only inherited her father’s math abilities but also his madness, Nguyen brings us with her, making us root for her recovery.

Michael Tow as Robert, sometimes appearing as a ghost in Catherine’s imagination, gives a measured but mercurial performance, not quite calibrated in his responses. Cheryl Daro manages to skirt the edge of cliché as the accomplished, New York professional, self-satisfied with her job, her life and the decisions that she makes for Catherine. Avery Barger is most attractive as Catherine’s suitor, a young man in love, but also on the make to build his own career.

Director Michelle M. Aguillon has made an interesting choice in casting Asian-American actors to portray Robert and his daughters, reflecting how academia has been changing to include a wider representation of the population. This revival of “Proof” seems just right in finding a home at Central Square Theater, halfway between math-geek territory at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.